


The last verses of Jean Prouvaire

by Maidenfromthevalley



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Birds, Canon Era, Character Death, Gen, Hope, Sadness, Violence, headcanons, mentions of school bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24268681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenfromthevalley/pseuds/Maidenfromthevalley
Summary: The poem Jehan recites is from the Brick, so it's not mine, but Victor Hugo's.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	The last verses of Jean Prouvaire

Jehan closed his eyes and let the night wind caress his cheeks. Even if he felt terrible pain in his wounded right leg he forgot it now, at least for a moment. But he couldn't forget his situation. He wasn't with his friends now, he was with the National Guard. He wasn't able to remember what had happened. All that he remembered was that he had been fighting alongside Enjolras, Combeferre and the others but what had happened after it? He couldn't remember, after he had climbed to the top of the barricade and killed one soldier, all had went suddenly black. And now he was on the wrong side of the barricade, hands tied so tight that it hurt. Yet he didn't cry, he had decided that he wasn't going to show any weakness to the National Guard, he would be brave, the bravest of all. He had decided to show it to the whole world that he wasn't afraid that he would, at least, die brave and that he was, at least, once in his life the master of his feelings. 

His whole life he had been very sensitive, cried and blushed easily, and in the situations that he didn't want to and his parents had always worried if he could survive at all because he didn't know how to control his feelings. At school he was always the last one to be chosen to the team in games, nobody wanted the boy who cried immediately after he had gotten a small scratch which didn't even bleed.

Jehan was bullied at school, he remembered suddenly, a lot. He was bullied because he wasn't like the others, he didn't suit to the mass of boys who were all the same. He was different, he liked flowers, poems, music, and his fashion sense when he was on the holidays was...well...nobody actually couldn't describe it. (He was thankful to his school uniform, because of it the boys couldn't bully his fashion at school.) He liked all the things that the other boys at the boarding school mocked to be "girly". Jehan didn't understand, he couldn't understand what crime he had done, he knew that it would be impossible to him to like snakes and spiders and tricks that the other pupils did to the teachers and he didn't want to play war in the breaks between the lessons. Instead, he was almost always found sitting under the huge tree and composing a love poem or watching the birds fly. 

Jehan opened his eyes, it was too painful to think his past, which had been full of bullying and bad moments which he didn't want to remember at all. Instead, he started to watch what was around him and realized that he was on his knees in front of the huge wall. He saw one of the soldiers approaching him and felt the braveness betray him but he forced it to come back from hiding.

The soldier wasn't a captain but he was a high in rank after all. He knelt before Jehan, watched him for a moment and then hit him with his huge hand. Jehan closed his eyes in shock and felt a ache in his cheek. But he wasn't going to cry, he wasn't, he wasn't...

Before Jehan had recovered from his shock, the soldier grabbed Jehan's shoulder and forced him to stand against the wall. Jehan couldn't help but shout of pain because he had to stand using his wounded leg. The soldier laughed almost hysterically but then cut it short. The soldier was now so near that Jehan could smell his bad breathing.

-Listen now, brat, the soldier began, - if you give us information about your little friends and their plans in this fight we can let you go free.

Jehan didn't say anything, instead he spat in the soldier's face. The soldier laughed again.

-Don't try to be braver than you are, little brat. I know that you are scared to death.

Jehan looked at the soldier and turned pale. This was a nightmare. This had to be a nightmare, just a really bad dream. Pierre. How this was even possible? His worst teaser from school was now in front of him, laughing at him, bullying him again after all the years he had been able to be free from him. Jehan raised his chin, and the soldier laughed, laughed so much that he almost choked. 

-Are you going to give me information or not? Pierre asked again after he had stopped laughing.

-No, never, Jehan asked, and tried to be brave, - I will not betray my friends.

-Well, then, if you don't want to...then your fate is death.

-So be it, Jehan answered, his face now red of hate. 

-Do you want to be blindfolded? Pierre asked coldly. Jehan shook his head, he wanted to die facing his fate, facing his teasers.

Captain Fannicot with the group of soldiers marched there. The soldiers raised their guns.

-Ready, aim! Captain Fannicot shouted. Suddenly, before Captain Fannicot had shouted "fire" Jehan saw a little bird, so little that it looked to be just a baby. It watched him amazed, dangling something in its beak. Jehan smiled. He wasn't scared. Pierre had been wrong. He wasn't scared. Not at all. He raised his voice.

-Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie  
Lorsque nous etions si jeunes tous deux,  
Et que nous n'avions au coeur d'autre envie  
Que d'etre bien mis et d'etre amoureux

His voice was soft and tears rolled down his cheeks. But he wasn't afraid, the tears were tears of joy not the tears of fear. 

Then the shot was heard. 

When the smoke had vanished the soldiers saw the young man lying on the dirty ground, full of blood. The soldiers saw him still breathing and Pierre approached him. He loaded his pistol and shot him in the head. And then the gentle poet was gone. He was no more. He had closed the door but opened the another one. He was free. 

When Jehan had carefully closed the door behind him and started to walk towards the light he heard a bird sing. He looked behind him and saw the little baby bird who tweeted and sang and flied merrily around him. Jehan laughed and ran and jumped with the little bird. And soon he and the little bird were covered by the warm, friendly light which smelled like roses and summer.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Jehan recites is from the Brick, so it's not mine, but Victor Hugo's.


End file.
